IN THE EYES OF TREE FROGS | SUPERNATURAL HORROR & DARK HISTORICAL FANTASY
INTRODUCING SONOKO (JAPANESE SCENES FROM FITZMARBURY WITCHES & BARATANAC TRILOGY PART I)
FILE NOTE: Document recovered from the computer hard drive of missing author Declan P. James.
DARK FIGURES IN THE SHADOW OF MOUNT YUFU
Yufuin, Kyushu Island
Japan
Spring, 1998
“Is it going to kill me, Grandpa?” asked the young girl.
Kinrin Lake glistened behind her frozen figure. The wall of Mount Yufu towered above the mirror-surface of the water and plunged in fathomless reflection. Wildflower swathes blotted its green slopes.
“No, Sonoko, not if you don’t anger it,” he explained. His hand reached for hers and squeezed. “When maddened they sting and release a scent that immediately draws others . . . only then are you doomed.”
The giant sparrow bee’s alien angular eyes inspected her, hovering before her face. It drew so close to her left eye that she awaited its touch. Still buzzing, it moved to her left ear where the draught of its wings tickled her.
Cold shadows travelled over her body as two dark forms walked past, then stopped close to her grandfather’s back.
“I’ve never seen one behave so strangely,” her grandfather murmured. “Like it’s whispering to you.” A shiver ran down his spine.
The huge hornet’s wings churned. It surged up into the dark canopy of a camphor tree, high above the two shapes, and paused now in shade on its wizened trunk.
The girl fell, sobbing, into her grandfather’s open arms.
“Don’t worry, it’s gone,” he soothed her, as she peered up into thick-leafed branches festooned with the vast webs of giant venomous Jorō spiders. “But remember, to many creatures the valley is a place of death.” His weathered face was wise and enigmatic. He rubbed her arms reassuringly. “This is how things have always been. Even the cautious freshwater crabs in the meandering streams live in fear.”
“Why?” Sonoko asked. “The water is so clean and clear. They can hide under the rocks.”
“There are no safe places here. Giant leeches reach for them under the rocks, grasp hold, then suck out their innards.”
“I will never paddle in the streams again,” she said, her small arms pulling him closer. Her feet were still without socks from that morning when she had paddled in a cold mountain creek.
“The forests are just the same,” her grandfather continued, his fatalistic wisdom filling her with horror. He had decided she was old enough to know the truth. “The earth-dwelling cousins of the giant water leeches slide and sniff through the forest undergrowth, perhaps meeting their match only in the giant centipedes – while both prowl for young tree frogs.”
VISITORS IN THE NIGHT
Small tree frogs clustered in the light of the third-floor onsen hotel window.
“They’ve come to see you, Sonoko,” said her grandfather as he read, cross-legged on the floor. He sipped from a small blue sake glass. “The giant hornet must have told them you were here.”
“He did?”
“Undoubtedly.”
In her nightdress, the young girl cried for her grandfather to let in her new friends, pressing her tearful face to the glass, close to their bulging eyes. She shivered and peered past them into the night, still electrified by the Kwaidan ghost stories her grandfather had just read aloud.
“One more, please, Grandfather,” she had begged, sitting close to him while folding origami cranes.
“You know your mother and grandmother will scold me if they find out I have been reading these to you.”
“I won’t tell,” she said, her face turned towards him. “There are lots of things I don’t tell them.”
Her grandfather looked up with a start from the pages in his lap. He pondered on her words, watching her. In her small perfect face he saw four generations of secrets.
Sonoko’s eyes moved from the gulping faces of the observing amphibians, into the many shadows beyond the window. Past the shuddering bamboo and the quiet rice paddies, she knew the hillsides climbed towards the twin peaks of Mount Yufu, looming unseen in the dark. She pressed her face to the glass, straining to see its outline. She imagined the blackened forests, swarming with the nocturnal goblins and ogres of the Kwaidan tales.
At the base of the bamboo, a dark figure caught her eye. It melted between the stems and halted below her window. It looked up, its eyes pools of black darker than the night in which it stood, then walked towards the wall of the building.
She turned and scampered across the floor to her tatami bed.
“Did you see them yet?” asked her grandfather as she flung herself under her duvet and pulled it to her chin. His tone was soft but firm.
“See who, Grandpa?” she asked, her teeth chattering. Ice ran down her spine as she watched him sip from his glass, his gaze fixed on her soft young eyes.
“You know . . . them . . . the dark figures.” He twisted his torso, following her furtive glances over his shoulder to an empty wall. “I thought your mother and grandmother had spoken to you about them. They were your age when it started to happen to them . . . at night.”
“You mean the shadow people?” she whispered.
He nodded.
“Yes,” she said. “They always find me, even in the daytime. I just pretend I can’t see them. Sometimes they go away, like today with the hornet.”
“When did you last see one?”
“Now,” she said. “It’s standing behind you.”
TEARDROP ISLANDS AND SAPPHIRE OCEAN
British Airways Airliner
Atlantic Ocean
January, 2017
Ding dong.
Sonoko gasped for breath, her eyes squinting in the harsh cabin light. Tugged from her dream, pushing the hair from her face, she listened to the smooth voice that resounded around her.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We will shortly begin our descent into Antigua. After landing, all passengers not disembarking in Antigua should remain seated. We will depart for Barbados after one hour.
Several origami cranes scattered in her lap and at her feet as she replaced the oversized headphones on her ears. She rested her eyes again for a moment, encased in the sound of David Bowie’s ‘Station to Station’. A small clear bag had slipped to her side. She held it up, eyeballing the sprig of delicate elderflowers, several short leafless twigs and a dozen orange rowan berries. She rubbed her eyes and leaned towards the window, tracing the feathered ice crystals on the outside with her finger. Far below, through the brilliant blue sky and cloud columns, impossibly green teardrop islands burst through the sapphire ocean. It’s real, she thought, as the sight shocked her fully awake. This is really happening. She felt so far from the red-brick Bloomsbury streets that had become her home since abandoning Fukuoka.
She dug her hand deep in her pocket, then removed it carefully. She eyed the small orange omamori charm in her palm, its red thread hanging between her fingers.
“Hang on, Declan,” she whispered. “I know who she is, and I’m coming to stop her.”
In the Eyes of Tree Frogs is the epilogue of Part I of Baratanac Trilogy (Book One of Fitzmarbury Witches).
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The Fitzmarbury Witches series unveils a web of predatory evil that spans eras and continents. Fans of Game of Thrones, The Pillars of the Earth, The Last Kingdom, The Witcher, and matured readers of Harry Potter and His Dark Materials will love BARATANAC.
For adult fans of Carlos Ruiz Zafón, Neil Gaimon, Stephen King, Anne Rice, Ken Follett, Alix E. Harrow, Diane Setterfield, Kate Mosse, Hillary Mantel, Philippa Gregory, Amy Harmon, Raymond E. Feist, Joe Abercrombie, Sabaa Tahir, Naomi Novik, Diana Gabaldon, Koji Suzuki, Bernard Cornwell, Clive Barker, Dean Koontz, Susanna Clark, Bridget Collins, V. E. Schwab, Charlie N. Holmberg, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Cassandra Clare, and Madeline Miller.
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